Four Southern Provinces on the Agenda of the Mobile Cabinet Meeting on Samui Island

(19/10/2012)

Four southern provinces along the Gulf of Thailand, namely Surat Thani, Nakhon Si Thammarat, Phatthalung, and Chumphon, have become a focus of attention, as the next mobile Cabinet meeting will be held on Samui Island in Surat Thani province. They are ready to welcome Cabinet members on their inspection trip to follow up implementation progress of various projects in the four provinces, and have also prepared development projects to be proposed for Cabinet approval. The mobile Cabinet meeting, the seventh of its kind under the Yingluck Shinawatra administration, is scheduled for 22 October 2012 at the International School of Tourism, which is part of Surat Thani Rajabhat University. Before the Cabinet meeting, Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra on October 21 will chair a meeting of the Joint Public/Private Sector Consultative Committee and a meeting of provincial governors from the Upper South, also at the International School of Tourism. Surat Thani is the sixth largest province in Thailand in terms of area. The population of this province is about one million. In 2011, the province welcomed 1.8 million local and international tourists. It has many islands, and Samui is Surat Thani’s largest island. Major projects to be proposed by Surat Thani will focus on water management to ease flood and drought problems, garbage disposal, waterworks expansion, the development of an information management center for education and tourism, and the construction of a hospital and a school. Nakhon Si Thammarat has a population of 1.5 million. The province is launching a campaign to seek support for getting its Wat Phra Maha That Woramahawihan listed as a World Heritage Site by UNESCO. Prime Minister Yingluck will visit this temple on 21 October to inaugurate the launching of the campaign, on behalf of the government and people of Thailand. Regarded as the center of Buddhism in southern Thailand, Wat Phra Maha That Woramahawihan is the oldest temple of Nakhon Si Thammarat, and it has become a major tourist attraction and a famous landmark in this province. Nakhon Si Thammarat will propose to the Cabinet projects to develop the landscape of Wat Phra Maha That Woramahawihan, the expansion of traffic lanes on Highway 4015, the development of a product distribution center, and the development of a language center in preparation for the ASEAN Community. As for Phatthalung province, it has a population of about 500,000. Its projects to be proposed to the Cabinet are mainly involved with infrastructure improvement to tackle the flood problem and the development of economic routes. Chumphon has a population of about 490,000. Projects to be proposed by this province are mainly involved with flood prevention, road improvement, and tourism promotion. During the meeting of the Joint Public/Private Sector Consultative Committee, the private sector in the South will urge the Government to increase rubber cooperation with Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, and Laos, in order to tackle the rubber problem in the long run. It will also propose the establishment of an organization to specially conduct research and studies on oil palm, a major cash crop in southern Thailand.